Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/52

 heaven which is without him according to the heaven that is within him. This plainly shows how much he is deceived, who believes that to go to heaven is merely to be elevated among the angels, without regard to the quality of one's interior life; thus that heaven may be given to every one from immediate mercy; when yet, unless heaven be within a person, nothing of the heaven which is without him flows-in and is received. Many spirits entertain this opinion [that heaven is granted from immediate mercy]. And because of their belief, they have been taken up into heaven. But when they came there, because their interior life was contrary to that of the angels, they grew blind as to their intellectual faculties till they became like idiots; and were tortured as to their will faculties so that they behaved like madmen.

In a word, they who go to heaven after living wicked lives, gasp there for breath, and writhe about like fishes taken from the water into the air, and like animals in the ether of an air-pump after the air has been exhausted. Hence it is evident that heaven is not without one, but within him.

Since all receive the heaven which is without them according to the quality of the heaven that is within them, therefore they receive the Lord in like manner; for the Divine of the Lord makes heaven. Hence it is, that when the Lord presents Himself in any society, He appears there according to the quality of the good in which the society is principled; thus not the same in